Sunday, July 19, 2015

I know I'm going to regret this. Anytime I put anything up that's critical of some Yankee mediocrity, they go on a tear and hit twelve grand slams in three games or pitch back-to-back no-hitters. So I realize I'm playing with powerful JuJu here (is that the Cambridge dictionary spelling?), or reverse JuJu, or simply pissing off some nutjob with a John Sterling voodoo doll who's going to stick a pin where the sun don't shine so the Master has to use that inflatable donut for the next week of broadcasts.

One quick thing out of the way: Adam Warren is a starter, and a pretty good one, and he is not a very effective relief pitcher. So can Michael Kay stop pumping the corporate love handle by talking about Warren's fastball being a whole--gasp!-- 1 mph faster since he's moved to the bullpen? What a dumb fucking...

But I digress. Aside from the myth of the great Yankee bullpen earlier this year, which I tried to speak out against early and often (Bettances and Miller and stumblebums, which has become better in more recent days), the other Great Myth of 2015 is that the American League East is a very weak division, and that the Yankees could win it by virtue of sucking just less enough than everyone else.

Well, look around. Practically every division in baseball sucks just as bad as the American League East. We don't have five or six powerhouses slugging it out anywhere at all. There are a small handful...and I mean Lollipop Kid hands...of pretty dominant teams, and everyone else is a mirror of the AL East that supposedly is soooooo weak. Martha, bring me my smelling salts.

First up, the AL. What do you see here? 'Cause I see Bud Selig's parity, and that's being charitable.

Only the Royals have anything approaching a championship record. The Twins, the Angels, the *surprising!* Astros--on a par with us. Everyone else, rampant mediocrity and worse. What division ISN'T lame? You have the Royals. Then you have shoulder shrugging on a massive scale.

Think the NL is any better? Horse twinkies.

Cardinals and Pirates, marginally the Dodgers. That's it. Everyone else, Palookaville. And we know the Cardinals only have such a great record because they're better hackers off the field than maybe on it.

So can everyone shut the fork up about how the Yankees are winning the division by default? With the exception of the Central division leaders in both leagues EVERYONE is winning their division by default. This is the state of baseball in 2015. There are a few really good teams, a Didi's worth of fairly mediocre teams, and some outright piles of Phanatic manure. That's it. That's all we got.

Whatever Cosmo or Vogue or WWD or GQ says this season, .500 is the new black.